Out of the games we have played thus far, this is the one that I foresee myself returning to outside of classwork. Several things contribute to making this game my favorite.
I like that the game is goofy. I like that it doesn’t take itself very seriously most of the time. That alone makes me look forward to playing it. The puns, the weird, nonsensical advice, make it seem altogether more modern than Assassin’s Creed and Empire. While Civilization had quotes that were occasionally meant to be funny, it always seemed like they went over my head, while Tropico seemed to relate to me better. This may seem like a small detail that I’m focusing too much on, but it’s these little, charming details that make the game memorable in my head and would make them a memorable teaching tool in a high school classroom.
Tropico is also easier for me to immediately understand because I have played city builder and resource management games in the past, which could not be said for turn-based games. I didn’t play the tutorial for this game, and I felt more innately aware of its mechanics regardless. It reminded me of games like Sims City builder, but also a flash game I played as a kid called Corporation Inc, in which you build a corporation and use the money from that to make a bigger building and hire more employees. It was fun.
I like that the class was able to hear from the Caribbean Historian about her perspectives on the game before we began playing. The idea of the game neglecting the slave labor that went into developing Caribbean nations is not something that I would’ve caught on my own. Because most games exist to make money, it's understandable why the developers decided not to include the subject. Historians don’t necessarily have this as their top priority when creating or contributing to media.
I think that the developers could have used the reality of slave labor to their advantage, however. Perhaps, near the beginning of the game, the player has to decide if the nation wishes to utilize slave labor or rely on the labor of the citizens. If the player chose to use slaves, build times/costs would be lower, however, later in the game it would become harder to gain trade partners, declare independence, or you have to deal with slave revolts. Perhaps the mechanic I’m describing would destroy the more fun atmosphere I praised above, but I think it would be worth considering.
Also mentioned by the historian was the overstated effect of conflicts like the Cold War and World War II on the island nations. She pointed out that very few Caribbean nations took sides in the conflicts, let alone were active participants. I had less of a problem with this while playing the game. Conflicts like the Cold War and World War II tend to dominate narratives of the periods they happened in. Using these events to separate eras, allowed me to easily recognize the themes of the period, and more accurately determine playstyles to adopt.
This is the first game that I think would be really good to integrate into a Politics and Government class. I think that this is because this is the first game that you don’t play as the Supreme Leader of civilizations, but as a pawn along with many others in the game to the Royal Family. This adds a really interesting need in the game for political savvy. Choosing objectives over others can have direct consequences on the amount of money you receive. Support of yourself, revolutionaries, or the crown all has different implications on the game and the events. I believe that this would be very interesting in a class.
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